News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

Sunday, November 22, 2009

BD impressions: Moon

10:00 PM / BD Impressions / 6 Comments

There's a big danger in making films about what is essentially something that, in real life, would be very boring, for the obvious reason that you run a high risk of the film itself becoming boring. This is a trap that Duncan Jones can't quite avoid with his 2009 sci-fi piece Moon, about a man who has spent the last three years aboard a mining base on the moon with only GERTY, a computer voiced by the ever-laconic Kevin Spacey, for company. To an extent, it drags because it has to: if it zipped along at a breakneck pace it woulf be disingenuous.

Ironically, though, I found it more engaging than J.J. Abrams' much faster Star Trek reboot, the reason being that, rather than being about explosions and effects, Moon is about an individual and his plight. Unsurprisingly, after three years in complete isolation, Sam Bell is beginning to go mad... or thinks he is. This is compounded by the sudden appearance of another man called Sam Bell who looks identical to him and appears fairly unfazed by all this, and it's here that Jones achieves his masterstroke, effortlessly switching viewpoints between the two Sam Bells to the extent that you don't realise the film has suddenly switched to a different character's perspective until after the fact. Although there are appearances from a variety of bit players, including Dominique McElligott as Sam's wife and Kaya Scodelario (of Skins fame) as his daughter, the whole thing is essentially a one-hander (or should that be two-hander?) delivered by Sam Rockwell, who does an impressive job of portraying two very different incarnations of the same person, one or both of whom may or may not be losing his mind.

In some respects, Moon's elliptical nature can be a tad frustrating, and it's tempting to suggest that many of the arresting images we see are included not because they mean something but simply because they are intriguing and unsettling. Why, for example, does Sam have hallucinations about seeing his daughter as a teenager, despite having seemingly only seen her as a toddler via video link? Why is the second Sam Bell so seemingly unsurprised to encounter his double? (This part actually makes even less sense once we learn what's actually going on.) Why is a human employee even needed on the moon, given that all the real power seems to lie with GERTY? But at the same time I suspect much of the film's power lies in this proliferation of unexplained oddities. It's eerie rather than outright scary, but a feeling of loneliness is palpable throughout, and the understated visual effects (a combination of green screen and miniatures) are largely effective to the extent that you don't notice them. Numerous shots feature two Sams on screen at once, often interacting with one another, but when watching the film I never, even for a moment, found myself pondering how the effect was achieved.

Plus, simply put, there's no way I can dislike a film that includes both Matt Berry (Dr. Lucien Sanchez himself) as a sinister businessman and the voice of Kevin Spacey as a talking computer.

Image quality: Another solid effort from Sony Pictures, whose batting average continues to be higher than that of the other majors when it comes to BD releases. Moon has a somewhat softer focus than something like Star Trek, but the overall effect is not unpleasing, and the appearance of the fine grain that is visible throughout suggests that the image has not been tampered with in any way. Blacks are somewhat elevated, but this seems somewhat appropriate given the film's the gloomy, low contrast look. 9/10

Moon
studio: Sony Pictures; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 20.7 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 30.62 Mbit/sec

6 Comments

 
To combat spam, commenting is automatically disabled on entries older than 30 days.

Did a comment you tried to post accidentally get eaten by the spam filter? It happens from time to time. I get upwards of 200 spam comments every day and unfortunatley don't have the time to weed through all of them in case something genuine ended up there by mistake. If one of your posts gets incorrectly flagged as spam, email me at whiggles[at]ntlworld[dot]com and I'll do my best to retrieve it.